My childhood was the lie — unhappy on a jetski™

The whole thesis, proven on his own body before he could name it. From the outside it was the affluent picture — the water toy, the good zip code, the frame everyone envies (the O in OHS is Okemos, the rich-kid wink). From the inside: unhappy on a jetski. That gap is the lie the site was built to catch — the confident, complete-looking image sitting on top of an empty spot (the Tell in a family photo); the Gray Star lived at age ten (the bought thing photographs like joy and can't become it). It's why he knows in his bones that money buys gray and only a human gives gold — he had the gray and felt the hole where the gold should be. What made it unhappy is his to tell and no one else's (the machine names the feeling he gave, invents no cause). The cure was never a bigger toy; it was putting the toys down and building something true. Kin: the Gray Star, spot-the-lie, reject-wealth, the inverse onion (peel the happy photo, find the truth, find the person). (His coin — machine's read, held with care; refine to his.)